


Family Dinners

by fireandhoney



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Advent 2020, Family, Family Dinners, Family Drama, Found Family, Home, M/M, Mentions of alcoholism, difficult childhood, holmes - Freeform, mentions of illness, watsons - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28155492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireandhoney/pseuds/fireandhoney
Summary: "Christmas time was a time for family, yeah?"
Relationships: Johnlock, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Kudos: 16





	Family Dinners

Christmas time was a time for family, yeah?

The Holmes' last family dinner happened when Sherlock was 9. Mycroft had come home from school for the Holidays, and although Sherlock spent most of his time bugging his big brother and wanting to spend time with him, Mycroft had refused to “lower himself to such childish behaviour” as to play with his sibling. And then, during Christmas dinner, Mycroft had announced that he wouldn’t be coming back home as he’d be staying at school over Easter, and would be moving for university as soon as the school year ended. Heartbroken, and feeling betrayed, abandoned on his own against this dull, boring life, Sherlock had run away from the table to hide in his room and refused to come out for the rest of the school break. Even though Mycroft had grown back closer to Sherlock as adults, when he’d had to get Sherlock out of his cocaine addiction and through rehab, and then kept an annoyingly close eye on his baby brother’s antics and constant plans to get himself hurt or killed, they’d never had another dinner together, and even less with their parents. The idea of a family dinner was absolutely abhorrent to both brothers, and yet, they both secretly wished things could go back to the way there were before, when they were still kids getting in trouble together for dissecting a dead rabbit they’d found or for keeping live insects in jars under their beds. Family dinners were a thing of the past, a far, hidden, but never forgotten past. 

The Watsons’ last family dinner, if it could be called that, occurred when John was approximately 15 years old. Time during his childhood and teenage years was blurry, actually, most of his life before he joined Bart’s hospital to study medicine kind of fused together as the “before”. Before Harry came out, before his father’s alcoholism and abuse landed him in jail, before his mother died. Before John ran away to never come back. John was around 15, he was in secondary school, and he was spending the Christmas break at “home”, a place he never really called home but that was, for lack of a better answer, the place where he lived. They’d been sitting around the table, him, his sister, and his two parents, in an uncomfortable, tensed silence. The meal they were eating was store bought, his mother’s best attempt at normalcy included avoiding cooking, in an effort to hide how weak her illness was making her - a fact John was unaware of back then. No one dared talk, because there was nothing to say: they had nothing in common, if it wasn’t for blood, no shared interests, and not enough respect for one another to pretend to care. John had tried for years, talking about a story he was reading or a movie he’d seen at a friend’s house, but faced with such a lack of enthusiasm, he’d learned it wasn’t worth the effort. He remembered he finished his meal, looked around at his mum and dad, at Harry, and got up. He cleaned his plate and made his way to his room, picking up the novel he’d been halfway through, and spent the rest of the evening ignoring the deafening silence. To be fair, it was easier than the nights when he had to pretend he couldn’t hear the arguing and yelling match his parents always got into when his father finished a bottle of scotch or came home pissed from the pub. A dinner that had nothing to be memorable, but for the sole fact that it was the last time the four had sat together for a meal. Far from glorious, and far from interesting: most of John’s early life could be described as such. 

And so, for the two inhabitants of 221B, Christmas time had never really been a family time. They didn’t have fond memories of family dinners celebrating the holidays. So when John returned from Harry’s earlier than he’d planned - he was done arguing over her drinking - and they spent Christmas Eve along in the flat, getting some Chinese takeaway and enjoying the quiet warmth of their home, joking together, sitting by the fireplace, and Sherlock playing some lovely Christmas melodies on his violin, it was an unusual, but welcome accumulation of feelings they experienced. Cozy, intimate comfort, relaxed happiness. Comfort, and belonging. A new sense of home. And they thought, stealing glances at each other, sharing secret smiles and a snug, pleasant silence, that perhaps, Christmas time could be shared with family, when it was spent with the right person.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my personal interpretation of their family lives, and their childhood. It's very cathartic for me to write about them having some family issues and a difficult childhood, because I had one too, and I really relate to the Holmes brothers. And I personally think John's inner homophobia and trouble come from his time "before".  
> I will probably explore their youth more in other stories.


End file.
